We aim to give our audiences a glimpse of the glamour and the politics of the African fashion scene. We hope that people come away with the view that African fashions are undefinable, always changing, always refusing to be pigeon-holed. We want audiences to come away inspired by the magnificence of African creativity and to want to find out more.
It is remarkable how snugly Rose’s work fits into a museum or gallery. In spite of the unsettling manner she attacks most of her topics- racism, white supremacy, female empowerment, occluded colored identity- they are frequently layered with a veneer of artistic respectability. They are also marked by a pliability that attracts considerable commercial possibilities.
Under Project is primarily an empty room that’s publicly visible. After that, it’s a lot of programming, and curating, and emailing, and installing, and printing flyers on our end.
But that first point –an empty room for testing out ideas for works and shows– is really important, especially as it becomes increasingly rare in Cape Town.
“I was captivated by it. It convinced me of the power of limitless, passionate phantasy, of storytelling as a concept and of sadness in combination with liberating humor. It proved the artificiality of the difference between low art and high art and, yes, it showed that Darger has looked over his shoulder.”
The Los Angeles based artist Umar Rashid has a solo exhibition in the Dordrecht Museum in the Netherlands. From October 29 2022 until March 5 2023. A good reason to republish the interview I had with him in 2016.
“(humor) is indicative of my upbringing as a Black male in the United States (or anywhere in the Western psyche for that matter). Casting any light upon the White male hierarchy outside of the accepted canon requires superhuman (albeit tiring) cleverness, deftness, and diplomacy to which other groups are not so subjected. I don’t feel like this all the time but my black survival training always pushes this “behavior” into my frontal lobe. A shameful bi-product of living within the veil of unending racism. Yet, on a different note, I do consider myself to be quite funny.”